Here are the ages your brain peaks at everything throughout life

Erin Brodwin,Skye GouldJul 29, 2017, 08.50 PM

If you think you've already witnessed the rise and fall of your peak self, researchers have news for you: As far as your intelligence is concerned, you likely have several new highs to look forward to. Some of them, like the ability to read others' emotions or do basic arithmetic, don't arrive until middle age or beyond.

"At almost any given age, most of us are getting better at some things and worse at others," Joshua Hartshorne, an MIT cognitive science researcher and the lead author of a study looking at how intelligence changes as we age, told Business Insider.

The team behind that study quizzed thousands of people aged 10-90 on their ability to do things like remember lists of words, recognize faces, learn names, and do math. Their results suggest that no matter your age, there's almost always a new peak on the horizon.

Peak vocabulary skills happen around age 67.

Peak vocabulary skills happen around age 67.

Ever wonder why you always lose at Scrabble? Good news: Your best days may be ahead. According to people's scores on multiple-choice vocabulary tests, most of us don't reach our peak wordsmith-ing abilities until we're in our late 60s or early 70s.

Peak ability to learn and understand new information also occurs around age 50.

Peak ability to learn and understand new information also occurs around age 50.

Similar to the way your ability to do basic math peaks at age 50, your ability to learn and understand general information — like historical events and political ideas — doesn't reach its pinnacle until around the same age, according to Hartshorne's study.

The ability to do basic arithmetic peaks at age 50.

The ability to do basic arithmetic peaks at age 50.

Many people believe that their math skills go down the drain after they leave school and stop practicing arithmetic. But the next time you try to split up a check, keep this in mind: your ability to do basic subtraction and division doesn't reach its apex until your 50th birthday.

In other words, "there may not be an age where you're the best at everything," Hartshorne said.

We're the best at identifying others' emotions at 48.

We're the best at identifying others' emotions at 48.

Dating is tough. One of the reasons could be that we're generally bad at reading other people's emotions until we reach our late 40s. That's according to one component of Hartshorne's study, which involved showing thousands of people images of faces cropped tightly around the eye area. Participants were asked to describe the emotion the person in the photo was feeling. Performance peaked for people aged around 48.

Concentration abilities peak around age 43.

Concentration abilities peak around age 43.

Having trouble focusing? A 2015 study from researchers at Harvard University and the Boston Attention and Learning Laboratory suggests that our ability to sustain attention improves with age, reaching its peak around age 43.

“While younger adults may excel in the speed and flexibility of information processing, adults approaching their mid-years may have the greatest capacity to remain focused,” Joe DeGutis, one of the study's lead authors, said in a statement.

Peak facial recognition ability occurs around 32.

Peak facial recognition ability occurs around 32.

The human brain has a remarkable capacity to recognize and identify faces, and scientists are just beginning to learn why. On average, we know that our ability to learn and remember new faces appears to peak shortly after our 30th birthday.

The ability to learn unfamiliar names peaks at 22.

The ability to learn unfamiliar names peaks at 22.

Most adults are bad at memorizing bits of information without context, a phenomenon that neuroscientists chock up to the Baker/Baker paradox. A classic example of this idea is that you'll have an easier time remembering a story about someone who bakes than a person with the last name Baker. Because there's no context that links the person to the name, it doesn't become firmly lodged in your memory.

Overall brain processing power and detail memory peaks around age 18.

Overall brain processing power and detail memory peaks around age 18.

Scientists use a test called Digit Symbol Substitution to assess everything from dementia to brain damage. It requires people to use a number of cognitive skills at once — including processing speed, sustained attention, and visual skills. The tool, which typically involves pairing numbers with symbols, is also part of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, one of the most widely used measures of intelligence.